Media Matters breaks kayfabe

What’s kayfabe? Well, up until recently, professional wrestlers denied that anything they did in or out of the ring was staged. They insisted the outcomes of their matches weren’t predetermined, the feuds were real, etc. This front, this code among insiders, was known as kayfabe. But it became harder and harder to maintain in the Internet age, so finally Vince McMahon said the hell with it. He admitted that it was all made up and rebranded pro wrestling as “sports entertainment.” He took all the criticism and mockery of his business and made it part of the act.

Now David Brock is doing something similar. He’s admitting — hell, bragging — that Media Matters’ mission is exactly what we all knew it was, while they pretended to be a “media watchdog” group. Steven Nelson reports:

Politico published an eye-opening report on Saturday by Ben Smith about “Media Matters’ war against Fox.” Smith wrote that the organization continues to transform itself into an exclusively Fox News-battling group.

Media Matters founder David Brock told Politico that his organization’s activism has developed into a “war on Fox.” This strategy includes extensive work to compile intelligence on the employees of the cable news channel.

“We made a list of every single person who works for Fox and tried to figure out who might be disgruntled and why, and we went out to try to meet them,” Media Matters executive vice president Ari Rabin-Havt told Politico. “Somebody in that organization is giving us primary source documents.”

Rabin-Havt also told Politico that Media Matters was compiling “opposition research” files on “mid- and senior-level execs and producers.”

“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press,” read a 2010 memo by Brock that was acquired by Politico. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

Wait, I thought Rush Limbaugh was the de facto leader of the GOP? I guess the de facto leader of the GOP is whoever its enemies choose, at the time of their choosing.

So Media Matters has given up pretending they’re about media criticism, which everybody has always known is a bunch of crap. They’re conceding that they’re exactly what they claim Fox News is: a political organization. And now that they’ve given up their biggest lie — “Look, ya got us, we admit it, okay?” — we’re supposed to trust them. We’re supposed to believe all their otherlies.

It might be time to reassess Media Matters’ tax-exempt status, huh? But that’s another story…

P.S. An oldie but a goodie:

P.P.S. Oh yeah, I forgot about Media Matters’ nauseating “media boot camp.” They’re not the first TV pundit training program out there, but it tells you something that they don’t want anybody to know who their graduates are.